


Taking Chances

by likingandloving



Series: Sweet and Bitter [5]
Category: Parks and Recreation
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-29
Updated: 2016-01-29
Packaged: 2018-05-16 23:27:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,450
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5845075
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/likingandloving/pseuds/likingandloving
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ben decides that tonight, he’s going to kiss Leslie.</p><p>Even if the world was crumbling and burning around him, he was going to kiss Leslie.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Taking Chances

**Author's Note:**

> Hey guys! I'm so sorry for the fact that I haven't updated this in a month, but I have an extra long update to make up for it! I was in bit of a rut, but now I am definitely out of it because on an amazing, distraction-free app called OmmWriter that works wonders on me. Anyways, hope you enjoy and hope you can take the time to leave me a comment on how much you liked this and what you think happens next! Until next time, bubbies!

“You’re kidding me.”

“I’m not, I believe that at least one of these ideas is usable!”

Ann rolls her eyes, picking up one of the ten stray binders on Leslie’s bed, all in varying colors, thickness, and with dozens of post-its sticking from in between its pages.

“You’re going to tell your professors that you can’t come to class because you started living in a bubble?” Ann holds up her ‘The Bubble’ binder, which to be fair; had some pretty solid ideas about autoimmune disorders and the logistics of her telecommute to class. Ann, however, doesn’t seem to appreciate the genius of it and tosses it back on the bed.

“You’re crazy, Les. You should just call him.”

“I can’t just call him, Ann.”

“He tried to kiss you. Of course you can call him.”

“I don’t have his number!”

She’s not lying; she really doesn’t have his number. She didn’t have time to get it. Marcia Langman had continuously ranted to her about how Indiana was becoming a sex den while Ben had shifted awkwardly next to her before whispering to her that he had to go. He pressed his lips quickly to her cheek before making a swift exit, leaving her skin burning and thoughts of regret flushing out Marcia’s voice.

“I’m dating his roommate, we can ask Chris for his number—“

“Okay, look Ann, I’m fine. I embarrassed myself in front of Ben and now I never ever want to see him again. Isn’t that normal?”

“No.” Ann crosses her arms, tapping her foot impatiently and looking too scarily like her mother when she knows that she’s in trouble.

“Look, I know it was embarrassing but I think he really likes you and that you should call him.”

Leslie sighs. She knows this. She knows that she should call him and ask him on the date and get another chance to kiss that super cute mouth of his, but the bigger part of Leslie, the bigger part that feels like she’s ruined all chances with him, doesn’t want to call him. Calling him meant that the possibility of him closing the door on them made it so much more real and she didn’t want that.

She was perfectly fine with completely ignoring him and everything relating to that night and living in blissful ignorance the rest of her time her at IU until she had to move back to Pawnee.

“You’re being ridiculous.” Ann huffs impatiently, but drops the subject anyway and suggests that she get ready because she has class in like thirty minutes.

She practically drags her feet to class, dressed in nothing but a loose hoodie and a pair of jeans just in case she needed to make a quick getaway if she saw Ben. She enters Hawthorne’s class and takes her usual seat by the front, laying out all her pens and pencils based on color and trying not to fidget at the urge to just go back to her apartment and hide under the covers.

Professor Hawthorne comes into the room moments later, clearly flustered as he sets down his things on his desk.

“Good afternoon, class. I apologize for being late, but as you all may have heard, John Watkins has been unfortunately banned from entering the university due to an unfortunate incident…” Mr. Hawthorne trails off as the murmurs in the class rise.

Right. Leslie had heard about it over the weekend. John Watkins was Hawthrone’s current TA, but apparently they found almost 2 pounds of marijuana in his dorm room when most of his floor was stoned during a rush party. She heard that he was expelled.

“Due to this…” Professor Hawthorne clucks his tongue in obvious disapproval. “…unforeseen circumstance, I was late to class trying to find a replacement TA for the rest of the semester.”

That’s when the door opens and an equally flustered Ben Wyatt rushes into the classroom, bag tight over his shoulders as he walks up right to Hawthorne.

Shit.

Shit. Shit. _Shit._

Leslie feels herself freeze, embarrassment rising in her cheeks as she stares at Ben, who conveniently becomes TA to her only everyday class when she’s avoiding him.

Ugh, and she hates that he is even cuter than before, with his hair sticking up in all the right places and a tight pair of black jeans on.

“Sorry, professor. I just a quick word with the department head.”

“That’s fine, Ben.” Hawthorne quickly reassures. “Class, this is Ben Wyatt. He was my TA last semester and he has so kindly agreed to be my TA for the rest of the semester.”

Ben’s eyes quickly flit to hers before glancing around at the rest of the room.

“Um, hey guys. My name is Ben Wyatt and like Professor Hawthorne said, I’ll be your TA for the rest of this semester.”  
Professor Hawthorne places a hand on Ben’s shoulder’s and smiles at him.

“Okay class, I know that Watkins wasn’t the best TA…”

Well, if showing up to class mostly stoned wasn’t being the best TA, she didn’t know what was.

(She’s being sarcastic, because she mostly hated Watkins. He mostly leered at her when she complained about the grading system and when she was pointing out fair points in her papers that he was probably just too high to understand. Why he was TA was beyond her.)

“… but I guarantee you that Mr. Wyatt here is one of the best TAs that I’ve ever had the pleasure of having. You will all  
be in good hands.”

She wishes she knew how good those hands were.

Fuck.

Leslie ducks her head, quickly trying to push out the way that Ben’s hands felt, the strength and gentleness of his touch, making a home on her waist. She tries to forget how his long fingers, his long, _long_ fingers, felt brushing against the hot skin of her cheek to tuck some loose hair away.

She spends the rest of the class with her eyes trained on her book, chewing on her lip nervously as she highlights passages she’s already read three times and trying to ignore the burning stare she can feel from the front of the room.

So much for avoiding Ben.

\---

**_Two weeks later_ **

Ben groans when pushes away the book on his stomach, tossing the ‘Algorithms for Intermediates’ unto the floor as he gets lost in thought yet again and completely doesn’t understand what the book was saying. It’s been hard to focus as of lately, not when a certain girl keeps invading his thoughts like some sort of bacteria or virus he just can’t get rid of.

He had spaced out of algorithmic variances and began thinking about the sparkle in Leslie’s eyes and how the blue shined as bright as the clear sky. The way that her eyelashes created the perfect frame for her eyes and their color. How he remembers the stray eyelash he was about to pick off on her cheek right before he bent down to kiss her.

God, he thinks he’s going to go crazy just thinking about her.

Ben taps his fingers against his stomach, staring up at the peeling paint of his dorm room ceiling and replays what happened almost two weeks ago. In that span of time he’s been respectful of Leslie and staying clear of her because it was clearly what she wanted with the way she kept ducking out of class as soon as it was over.

He had almost kissed her, almost dipped and tasted the lips that he’s always wondered were as sweet as she always smelled. Like vanilla and passion and the fury of the sun.

He groans and presses the heels of his palms into his eyes, as if he was trying to remove the image of Leslie, lips parted and breathless whispers coming from her lips, that was seared into the back of his eyelids.

She, of course, had avoided him in class today again.

He had heard about Watkins two weeks ago. The dumbass had gotten caught by the RA selling pot to a couple of freshman on their floor during a rush party and when campus security searched his room, they found almost four kilos of marijuana on him. He wasn’t surprised when he woke up the next morning to a text from Hawthorne asking to see him before his first class.

He had almost immediately said yes when Hawthorne had offered him the TA position.

Part of him said yes because he knew Leslie would be in that class. It seems stupid, to accept this tiring, stressful and back beating job over some girl he had a crush on, but she was as relentless in his mind as she was in real life.

The memory of her on the back porch, cheeks flushed and movements fluid as she pressed against him, the warmth of her seeping right underneath his skin and straight into his bones. The way she had brought him to the coffee shop to teach him how to make hot chocolate because he was feeling bummed about Ice Town and how the sweet smell of her imprinted itself in his mind when she brushed closed to him, hands gently guiding him as she taught him to steam milk. The way she chewed on her lip on concentration during a test and the way her eyes swept through reading material. She had looked particularly pretty yesterday, with a pair of jeans and this shirt with a cute drawing of a waffle and he had remembered how much she loved waffles.

Every memory of her, every fleeting touch and small moment burned into him, attacking his every sense.

She had slipped out into the sea of people that suddenly flooded the halls when class was over. He was about to go after her, but Hawthorne had asked him to stay after class and go over lectures and research points he needed done. Once he was released, she was nowhere to be found and it was clear to him that she didn’t want to speak to him, so he decided that he would be respectful and not push it, but his brain wouldn’t listen.

 _She’s just a girl, Ben. There are lots of girls in Indiana._ He thinks to himself.

But none of these girls were like her. No girl had the passion for politicals like her, or smiled as cute as her, or argued so vehemently on Nixon vs. China, or had her eyebrows furrow in anger when he had argued with her in class about the importance of budget cuts.

“Are you saying that you can just cut budgets and fire people like they were disposable? They are people in real buildings with real feelings!”

“Government buildings have feelings?” He raised an eyebrow and that just spurred her on.

“I don’t know, but they might!”

“Okay, Ms. Knope, I appreciate your views on fiscal responsibility but you have your final paper to express them on. Now, about fiscal responsibility in local government units, in the past there has been much---“ Ben had tuned out Hawthorne at that point and instead watched as Leslie furiously scribbled in her notebook with frown lines set in her forehead and all he could think of is how cute it all was. He remembers it because Shauna Malwae-Tweep was flirting with him during that class and all he could do was look back at Leslie.

He was so fucked.

Ben shakes his head and slips off his bed, grabbing his spreadsheets from his bag and deciding that he was going to push all thoughts of Leslie out of his mind until he was finished with his homework for management accounting.

It works for a little bit but as soon as he really gets into it, a flash of purple in his peripheral vision catches his eye. He had tacked that post-it on his desk before this all happened with a wide grin and a wistful sigh at how the night had turned. She had slid a cookie over his table with the post-it attached, coy smile on her lips and her cheeks tainted in the slightest pink. He remembers how a curl had slipped from behind her ear and the urge to reach up and tuck it back. He had almost kissed her right then and there and God, he wish he had.

He sighs, throwing his pen down and running a frustrated hand through his hair.

He still wonders, more often than not, what it would have been like to kiss her.

What it would be like to wrap a hand around her waist and pull her close and push his lips right on hers. To feel her nose pushed into his cheek and her lips dancing over his. What it would be like to cup her neck and push impossibly closer to her.

He wishes he could get the chance to kiss her again and next time, there would be no distractions. No spilled hot chocolate, no Shauna Malwae-Tweep, no professors, nothing. Even if the world was falling around them, he knows that he would not stop for anything.

He wishes he could at least see her right now.

Well, there was one place he knew she would be.

He glances at his clock and it blinks back 12:30 in large, green, fluorescent letters.

Leslie would end her shift in maybe 30 minutes. That gave him enough time.

He quickly grabs all of his things, stuffing his phone and his books and a pack of post-its into his bag.

Ben decides that tonight, he’s going to kiss Leslie.

Even if the world was crumbling and burning around him, he was going to kiss Leslie. 

\---

The coffee shop is almost dead by the end of the night. Chairs are pushed underneath tables as soft fluorescent lines create shadows against the linoleum. Ben glances into the clear glass windows that are tinted with a slight gleam of frost and sees her inside. Head down, hair pulled back and eyes focusly trained on whatever she was reading behind the counter. He took a deep breath, hoping the cold air would give him some sort of courage.

She’s just staring at her History notes then the familiar ding of the door quickly knocks her out of her haze but doesn’t totally catch her attention. She’s still glancing down at her notes while she addresses the customer, lightly hoping that they won’t order anything too complicated.

“Hi, how can I help you?”

“I was wondering if you could get me my usual. Long night ahead.” A familiar voice causes her head to whip up in such a hurry she thinks she gave herself whiplash. Ben is standing on the other side of the counter, a small smile on his lips and book bag slung over his shoulder. Her heart thrums a little louder, pounding underneath her ribcage as Ben slides a five dollar bill over the counter. She must be staring at him in nothing but silence because he coughs and nudges the bill again.

“Black with two sugars please.”

She does little but nod and hand Ben his change, who immediately drops it into the tip jar in front of the register before heading to his seat by the mural, like nothing had changed. She brewed his coffee and dropped two sugar cubes in. It was so routine, so familiar that her hands just moved without much thought. Once his coffee was ready, she held it with shaky hands and brought it to his table.

But he wasn’t sitting at the table and instead standing in front of the mural with his back facing her.

“Hey, you’re coffee’s ready.” He turns to her and smiles and fuck, she missed it when those smiles were directed at no one else but her.

“Thank you.” He walks to where she’s standing and takes the cup from her before setting it on the table and cupping her neck, pulling her right over his lips.

Leslie tenses at the sudden action, but it doesn’t take her long to sink into him, her fingers digging into sides as his soft, pliant lips moved gracefully under hers. Ben’s hand came up to cup the back of her neck as the tip of his nose grazed her cheek. He wasn’t pushy or intrusive. Instead, he was accomadating and guiding, moving but squeezing her waist to let her know that she had total control. He tilted his head to deepen their kiss and his tongue brushed her lower lip, seeking permission.

When Leslie opens her mouth and Ben tastes her for the first time, he was sure that she would be the only thing in this world that was worthy of the word ‘indulge.’ She was sweet, sweeter than he could have ever imagined and he’s sure that sugar rushes into his blood the moment they had made contact. His teeth slowly graze her lower lip and she moans right into his breath and he swears he almost loses all control at that one sound.

He doesn’t know how long they’ve been kissing, if it’s been seconds, or hours, or days because all he knows is that this is something he never wants to stop doing. Once air starts to grow thin, they break, him breathless and her baffled.

“Hi.” He whispers, nudging his nose against hers.

“Uh-oh.” Leslie breathes out. Ben pulls back and cocks his head in confusion.

“What?” He asks, rubbing reassuringly at her waist.

The door dings and both of them jump away, nervously straightening out their clothes as Ben sits down and opens a book upside down and Leslie starts to just twirl in search of something to do. A guy their age he’s never seen before obliviously walks towards the two of them, straightening out his shirt and fixing his bright red hair and clearly not in-tune to the sexual tension that was so clouded in the air that if you could actually see it it would resemble a thick fog.

“Hey Leslie. Are you ready for dinner?”

 _Dinner?_ He was taking Leslie to _dinner?_

Leslie nods and smiles nervously at Ben.

“Y-Yeah, I’m just waiting for Ben here to finish up then we can go. Ben’s a TA in one of my classes.” This Dave sticks out his hand and shakes it and Ben’s immediately thrown off by the sheer strength and grip of his hand.

“Ben, this is Dave. He’s my-- uh--“ Leslie glances nervously at Dave.

“We used to be romantically involved, but now we’re just friends and I’m taking her to dinner tonight.” Dave cuts in and Ben realizes now why Leslie had said uh-oh. Her ex-boyfriend was taking her out to dinner tonight and here he was, kissing her in the middle of an empty coffee shop after two weeks of no contact.

“Yeah, Dave is going to the police academy in Indianapolis.” Ben’s face immediately paled.

Oh God. Leslie’s ex-boyfriend was going to be a cop. A real-life, gun-wielding, arresting, cop.

“Oh, uh, yeah, it was, amazing to meet you Dave.” He waves awkwardly at them both and grabs his book bag before bolting out of there, shouting that he hopes they have fun at Disneyland (He is officially titling himself dumbass of the century) before walking out the door.

Leslie sighs, watching as Ben’s head of cute hair disappeared across the street.

“So, you almost ready?” Dave asks.

“Yeah. Almost, just let me wipe down Ben’s table then I’ll meet you outside.” Dave nods, reaching over to squeeze her hand, but Leslie is sure she doesn’t feel it because it because all she can feel is the burning and tingling of her lips where Ben had kissed her.

God, Ben had kissed her.

And it was even better than anything she had ever imagined.

As she moves to wipe down Ben’s table, a lone post-it stuck on the table’s surface causes her to freeze. She glances up to see that Dave is out of sight before reaching over to grab the post-it and stuffing it into the pocket of her apron. She finishes wiping down Ben’s table and meets Dave outside after she locks the coffee shop. He takes her hand and leads her to this nice Italian restaurant across town and Leslie hates that he’s there, telling her all about his life in San Diego and she can’t do anything but think of the post-it currently residing in her backpack and a cute guy with political opinions and a dark mayoral history.

_I was hoping to kiss you again._

_This time, over dinner next week._

She was fucked.

She was so, so fucked.

\---


End file.
